Trump considers renaming Lake Ontario ‘Lake America’ amid tariff war with Canada

Lake Ontario, covering 7,340 square miles, is the smallest of the five North American Great Lakes by surface area and named after Ontario, a Canadian province.

Oyindamola Olubajo • August 26, 2026

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the United States is considering renaming Lake Ontario ‘Lake America’ as the trade war with Canada escalates.

Lake Ontario, covering 7,340 square miles, is the smallest of the five North American Great Lakes by surface area and named after Ontario, a Canadian province.

“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to doing [sic] much business with them any longer,” Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social.

In another post, Mr Trump shared an image of the lake’s map, labelling Lake Ontario crossed out and Lake America drawn over it to indicate a name change.

The move comes as both countries engage in a cyclical trade dispute.

The minister responsible for Canada-U.S. Trade, Dominic LeBlanc, declined to comment on Mr Trump’s post, saying, “We’ve decided as a federal government months ago not to respond to sort of the daily social media posts of either the president or his Cabinet secretaries”, CNBC reported.

“We’re focused on doing what we can in Canada to build our economy and to having a constructive relationship with the government of the United States—our most important trading partner,” Mr LeBlanc added.

The Canadian government said on Tuesday it would impose tariffs ranging from 15 per cent to 50 per cent on 700 U.S. products from September 8 in response to the Trump administration’s measures against Canadian goods.

Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne described the measures as “dollar-for-dollar, rate-for-rate counter-tariffs” and a “multibillion-dollar support package [that] will protect workers, farmers, families, and businesses.”

Mr Trump’s latest move came hours after he announced on Monday that the U.S. would raise Canadian automobile tariffs by 50 per cent from January 2027.

“On trade, ‌and in other ways, also, ‌they are among the worst nations in the world to deal with. They feel entitled, and yet, we don’t need Canada; they need us,” the U.S. president said.

The Trump administration accused Canada of “discriminatory treatment of American products.”

Shortly after returning to the White House last year, his government renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

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